Ceiling Light Fixture

Edward F. Caldwell & Co. was one of America’s most prominent lighting and furnishing firms in the early twentieth century. They played a leading role in the transition from designing lights for gas, oil, or candle flames to electricity. For their clientele, which included many of the wealthiest individuals and institutions in America, they offered an extensive catalog of thousands of designs for chandeliers, wall sconces, table, and floor lamps, in styles ranging from medieval revival to the cutting edge of Art Deco modernism.

George Booth contracted with Caldwell & Co. in 1908 to supply the vast majority of the lighting fixtures and free-standing lamps for his new home, Cranbrook House – wired for electricity during the building process, in anticipation of access to power not then available in Bloomfield Hills. When Cranbrook House was extended between 1917 and 1920, George Booth returned to Caldwell & Co. for the necessary fixtures. In 1908 and later, the Booths also purchased furniture and decorative art items from the firm’s extensive stock of historical revival furnishings.

This pair of ceiling fixtures was placed in hallways in the east wing of the house, one in the service stairhall, the other in the vestibule outside the entrance to Ellen Scripps Booth's bedroom suite. The design, consisting of a wide flat ring of leaves or pointed petals ringing a small circle of upright petals, suggests a blooming flower with a lightbulb at its heart. Similar fixtures, placed elswhere in the house, were given different finishes in shades of gold and "antique iron," a matte black tone, to suit each fixture to its setting (see CEC 1148 and CEC 1152).

Mariam Hale
2023-2025 Collections Fellow
Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
September 2024